Muera, Por Favor
One of the things I’ve learnt in my pursuit of a BA in Spanish and French is that people tend to say stupid things in regards to my educational plans. Because, you know, a degree in anything besides IT or medicine or whatever is a waste of time. Clearly.
Below are examples of idiotic things said to me on a weekly basis as well as either the response I give or the response I wish I could give depending on who is doing the commenting.
“Oh. A useless degree.”
First of all, kindly fuck off.
Is there such thing as a useless degree, honestly? I don’t believe so. Least of all a degree in languages. Many people in English-speaking countries are monolingual; being multilingual is a sought-after skill in today’s job market. There are tons of things you can do with a BA in Spanish and French. Many people are unwilling to learn a second language. For some reason, this seems to be more rampant in countries where the predominant language is English.
Mostly, I’m getting a BA because I love languages and I like to learn, not because of the job I’m seeking.
“Nobody speaks French.”
I think the people of the 29 countries of which French is an official language would disagree with you. About 300 million people on the planet speak French. There is a French speaking country on every continent aside from Antarctica–as far as I know, emperor penguins don’t speak French. Or at least they didn’t in March of the Penguins which is clearly a vital source of penguin language information. It’s also an official language of both the United Nations and the European Union.
“French is useless.”
See above.
“Can you get a job with that? What are you going to do with that degree?”
I’m not getting a BA in Spanish and French to get a job; I’m getting a BA to learn more about something I love. I love to learn. I’ve always been that girl who’s constantly reading up about random things. When I was a kid, sometimes it was animals or dinosaurs or space or Sweden. Sometimes it’s still animals or dinosaurs or space or Sweden. I’m filled with tons of random bits of information about everything.
And, as I said earlier, multilingualism is a sought after skill even in non-interpretation or translation fields.
12 Responses
I don’t know whether to agree with you or not. BA and BCom are such popular degrees that practically, it’s hard to find jobs. One university outputs a gazillion BA and BCom students a year and there just really isn’t so much demand for them. However, I also believe that the top students in any field can become successful. If you could do so well in your course that businesses are offering you jobs even before you graduate, then it’s no way a waste of time.
But if you’re just doing something you love, others shouldn’t say anything. I love computer programming. I would love to get a degree in it. But with all that future job talk my parents go on and on about, there was no way in hell they’d let me do it. So… This is me suffering in my second choice course.
Where I live it’s practically impossible to get a job beyond retail unless you have at least a degree, but once you have it a lot more job opportunities open up even if your degree is completely unrelated, it seems. It’s sort of odd–like companies think as long as you made it through a few years you’re qualified for nearly anything.
A person I know studied Ancient Greek (talk about a job being difficult to find related to your BA!) at university and now has a high-level job at an international company that requires her to travel a lot. I’m fairly sure Ancient Greek has nothing to do with it. ;)
I’m weird in that I love coding and writing, but would never want to get a degree in either. Sometimes studying something formally takes all the fun out of it for me. Plus I’m definitely not a graphic designer (as you can see from the layout) and the thought of starting with beginner level HTML classes would probably make me cry.
I agree with you completely on getting a degree on what you love instead of on what get you the money-hogging jobs. My problem precisely was that I loved too many things and I couldn’t decide what to major in college. I went with biology and so far it’s good, but I’m always open to change if I see that something else calls more my attention. It’s not like at 19 I have experienced all areas of knowledge. I have a friend who is studying drama and his family criticizes him, saying that he will never get a job with that kid of degree, that he will starve to death if he thinks he’ll live off acting. I personally disagree with that opinion. So props for you for doing what you like. You chose two beautiful languages, by the way. Spanish is my mother language and I think it’s beautiful!
It’s very beautiful! I find it much more beautiful than other romance languages, personally. There’s something about it, perhaps the way it flows, that just made me fall in love with it.
I’m actually studying a few more languages casually and I’ve studied about eight different languages total (including Italian and French–I’ve also learned some Portuguese). I can safely say it’s my favorite language I’ve studied thus far.
There’s no way at my age that I can know exactly what I want to do with my life. I honestly have no idea where I’ll be in two or five years. In terms of education and the future, I don’t really want to limit myself. I want to find what I love and pursue it.
I don’t care about making a lot of money, honestly. I just want know that I’ll be able to eat next week and pay my rent. I’ve gotten on well enough without a lot of material items in the past and I could do it again. G-d made library cards for a reason. ;)
Exactly. It seems as if a lot of people nowadays just go into degree programs that they don’t like. They only apply for these programs, because you know, nurses, doctors, engineers, and IT programmers rake in the cash yo.
I have a friend who was pressured by his parents to pursue a degree in engineering. He regrets following their wishes, but is still being forced to finish the program. He’s starting to get failing grades, because he doesn’t love what he’s doing anymore.
I used to go to a university where everyone had the opinion that people who take BA courses are useless, stupid, and have no future. I took a BA course there, but decided to transfer after a year.
By the way, thank you so much for linking me.
Don’t listen to people who say that it’s useless – they’re just jelous that they wouldn’t be clever enough to do it.
Not enough people are multilnguel (sp?) nowadays, so having a degree in it will open alot of doors for you :)
I wish that that I was good at speaking different languages, it’s a good skill to have.
It’s great that you’re doing something you love. People don’t seem to do that much anymore. Or maybe it just seems that way because I don’t really talk to people about degrees, unless we’re discussing the temperature.
I love the Spanish language. It’s so pretty, and it actually makes sense, unlike English (sometimes). :)
As for French, I don’t know much about it, except that it looks much harder than Spanish. =/ I do know how to say a few things, but… the pronunciation might not be accurate. ;)
Aww, that’s awesome! Some of my friends are in courses they don’t like because they feel that they need to be there in order to help out their family (nursing, etc.) or because their parents forced them too =/
I know my parents will be more than happy to pay for my schooling, but I’ve decided to just save up for university so I can take whatever the hell I want without feeling guilty about money matters :P
I’ve been thinking about taking Linguistics or Spanish…hmm. Oh and French is not useless, it’s on everything here in Canada! Even the McDonald’s burger boxes have French translations, haha.
Meep, I rambled a bit. Sorry :P
Hmmmm….convos about my degree usually go something like this:
Person: So, what’s your major?
Me: I’m pursuing a BFA in Graphic Design
Person: Oh, that’s all! That’s where you just Photoshop things. Hell, I have Photoshop, maybe I can be a graphic designer too.
Me:……………..
Some people just don’t get it.
Kudos for pursuing something you love to do. *applause*
It’s terrible being forced to study something you dislike or hate. I think the only reason my parents didn’t put up a fight is because we had a really hard time as a family for about eight years and my marks suffered horrifically–I even left school a year late. I didn’t think I was going to be able to go to university at all for a while, but now I’m getting near perfect marks and actually enjoying myself. I think they’re mostly just glad I ended up here!
It definitely will, plus I think being multilingual is important in today’s world.
In my experience, French is much easier than Spanish. Spanish begins easier, but then gets really difficult pretty quickly whereas French starts hard and gets easier. Of course, both have their more difficult aspects. Clearly French pronunciation is high on that list. ;) My pronunciation right now is an embarrassment, but my writing and reading is fairly decent.
A lot of the most difficult parts of Spanish surround verbs. There are way more Spanish verb forms and conjugations used in every day speech and non-literary writing than in French.
That sucks. I’m going to a university close to home so I can live with my parents and help out with my family.
My parents won’t pay for my education so I’m definitely going to be in debt when I leave, sadly. I didn’t apply to some universities I could have been accepted to because I didn’t want to put myself a couple hundred thousand US dollars in debt. I can’t pay more for my education that my parents paid for their house! ;)
And hey, I love rambling. I tend to do a lot of it myself. :D
I think that there warrants a *facepalm* or two. I’ve been using Photoshop since the late 90s and I’m still no graphic designer! People who think graphic design and web development are easy drive me mad!
I speak French! *is hurt* What do they mean nobody speaks French … in fact all my friends and classmates speak French too because we’re in French Immersion. =.=
Hmph!
Some people think that because they don’t do something, know about something, etc., no one else does either!